SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL METHODS FOR IMPROVING ENERGY EFFICIENCY, ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE AND RESILIENCE OF SINGLE AND CLUSTERED GROUPS OF BUILDINGS

Energy consumption in the building sector is responsible for 36% of the energy use worldwide (corresponding to 39% of the total energy-related CO2 emissions), while at the European level the building sector accounts for a share of the total energy consumption comprised between 25% and 40% (corresponding to about 35% of the overall CO2 emissions throughout Europe). Concerning the Italian context, instead, such figures stand at about 40% and 17.5% for the energy consumption and for the CO2 emissions, respectively. In light of this, much attention has been paid, at global, European and single countries (national) levels on the important aspects regarding the reduction of energy consumption and the related decrease of greenhouse gases emissions in order to improve the environmental performance and the resilience of the building sector, both by the political and legislative bodies and by the scientific community. Despite the effort spent in putting into effect such actions, in recent years, the energy consumption in the building sector has experienced an increase, particularly in Italy. That is why more exertion in advancing the current measures and finding new innovative strategies to improve energy efficiency and resilience of buildings are of paramount importance. The research work carried out during the PhD course, and presented in this doctoral thesis, arises precisely from this context and from the desire to contribute to the question. To this end, strategies and solutions aimed at improving the energy efficiency, environmental performance and resilience of buildings, were assessed in detail by means of both experimental and modeling approaches. Accordingly, a number of case studies were designed and conducted to estimate how the adoption of some proposed interventions could impact the energy consumption, the indoor thermal comfort and contribute to the reduction of the CO2 emissions of buildings. In doing this, two important aspects influencing the afore-mentioned strategies and solutions were also considered, namely, the effect of the climatic conditions characterizeing the considered sites and the spatial scale at which they are applied, from the single building to a wider group of them, and how such perspective may influence the surrounding areas. The outcomes of the carried-out work put in evidence how accurate planning, construction and management of buildings, according to the peculiarities of the sites in which they are located, can contribute to reduce the energy and environmental burden of the building sector and at the same time help in the enhancement of urban resilience. Proper solution sets can, in fact, enable the building resilience against the outdoor stresses and simultaneously guarantee a regenerative indoor environment

Covering the Gap for an Effective Energy and Environmental Design of Green Roofs: Contributions from Experimental and Modelling Researches

Green roofs are components of the building envelope that have become increasingly popular in urban contexts because other than providing numerous environmental benefts they are also capable of reducing building energy consumption, especially in summer. However, despite all these advantages, green roofs are still affected by some limitations. Specifcally, there are some gaps affecting the energy modelling consisting in the absence of a proper database, information (growth stage, leaf area index, and coverage ratio) relative to the different green roof plant species, which technicians could use in case of lack of actual feld data to perform energy analysis of buildings equipped with green roofs. These gaps concern also environmental and economic assessments of such technology. In fact, the currently available green roof LCA and LCC studies seem to underestimate the role of the substrate on the overall environmental impact and the role of the disposal phase on the life cycle cost of the green roof. In this chapter, all these aspects are addressed, and contributions to their solution, which arose from both experimental and modelling research, carried out by the authors are presented

Enhance Urban Energy Management and Decarbonization Through an EC-based Approach

Promoting energy efficiency and decarbonization in urban settings, hence also in the variety of buildings within them, is amongst modern society major challenges. Urban settings are, in fact, responsible for almost 40% of energy consumption and energy-related pollutant emissions worldwide. In this framework, particular emphasis has been given by the EU and its member States on improving the energy performance of built environments by reducing buildings' energy consumption (retrofit interventions), by fostering the integration of renewable energy sources (RES), and by encouraging the establishment of pro-con-sumer groups/units (e.g., Energy Communities – ECs, consortia, etc.). These latter include users that share and collaborate in the energy management. Consequently, the need has arisen for more efficient energy management within individual ECs and between different ECs and public administrations and other potential stakeholders. Considering that ECs are a relatively recent reality, this paper discusses possible approaches to overcome some of the critical issues that have emerged from the Energy Community initiatives that are beginning to emerge recently

Potential of hydrophobic paper-based sorptive phase prepared by in-situ thermal imidization for the extraction of methadone from oral fluid samples

Paper-based sorptive phases (PSPs) are functional planar materials with a demonstrated potential in analytical sample preparation. This article describes the synthesis of a polyimide coated paper by an in-situ imidization at a high temperature. Polyimides (PI) are synthesized in two subsequent steps where a hydrophilic polymer, in this case, poly(amic acid) (PAA), is formed as an intermediate product. PAA is finally transformed into hydrophobic PI by thermal curing at 180 °C. The synthesis of PI-paper takes advantage of this two-step procedure. In the first stage, a segment of filter paper is immersed into an aqueous PAA solution. After the solvent evaporation, the paper is heated at 180 °C for 1 h inducing the formation of the hydrophobic PI over the cellulose fibers. Infrared spectroscopy has been used to characterize the synthesized materials by defining a coverage factor F. The hydrophobicity of the materials has been studied using an aqueous methylene blue solution as a marker. To fully demonstrate the usefulness of the material in the sample preparation field, the extraction of methadone from oral fluid (OF) samples has been considered as a model analytical problem. The main variables affecting the synthesis (PAA concentration on the precursor solution and number of dips) and the extraction (elution and extraction times) have been fully evaluated. Working under the optimum conditions, a limit of quantification of 9 µg/L, intraday and interday precision better than 14.6%, and accuracy in the range of 87–108% were obtained

Green analytical chemistry (GAC) applications in sample preparation for the analysis of anthocyanins in products and by-products from plant sources

Agri-food industry manufacturing is an important source of environmental pollution and eutrophication, both intrinsically and due to the generation of significant amount of by-products. For this reason, green chemistry is currently at the forefront of efforts to make all steps of agri-food workflows more sustainable and environmentally friendly and to reduce their carbon footprint. Green analytical chemistry (GAC) is an integral part of these efforts, although it has been largely neglected until now, due to the fact that analytical procedures are mainly limited to quality control in this field, and thus produce just a small fraction of the overall environmental burden of agri-food processes. In this mini-review, the most recent developments of green analytical methods are described, relative to their applications for anthocyanin determination in agri-food products and by-products. Anthocyanins have been chosen as they are among the most valuable secondary plant metabolites, with a wide range of possible applications exploiting their preservative, antioxidant and coloring properties. Non-separative and separative analytical meth- ods are included in this mini-review. The former are mainly spectrometric in nature, and usually mostly allow to detect and/or quantify groups or classes of molecules. However, they also provide very high throughput and the greatest chance to develop low-energy, low-solvent consumption procedures, even to the point of enabling direct determinations in solid samples as such. On the other hand, separative methods provide far greater selectivity and far wider applicability, but at the price of higher energy and resource consumption and usually lower throughput

Public and Private Economic Feasibility of Green Areas as a Passive Energy Measure: A Case Study in the Mediterranean City of Trapani in Southern Italy

Green infrastructure in urban environments provides a wide range of ecological, social, aesthetic, and health co-benefits. Urban plant covers in particular contribute to improved outdoor environmental conditions that, in turn, influence the energy behavior of buildings and their indoor thermo-hygrometric comfort performance. Within this context, this study illustrates a methodology aimed at verifying the economic feasibility of alternative types of green areas for public and private stakeholders, which are analyzed as passive energy measures. Therefore, our methodology integrates approaches from different disciplines and consists of a microclimatic analysis of different vegetation scenarios and of the outdoor comfort level, an evaluation of the energy needs of a sample of houses, and an economic feasibility estimation considering different scenarios and public and private investors. The methodology is illustrated through its application to a suburban district of the Sicilian city of Trapani in the South of Italy, considered representative of Mediterranean climate conditions. Results showed significant differences between the scenario outcomes depending on the type of vegetation used in the green areas and put in evidence how economic feasibility for some stakeholders may be achieved in the management phase if adequate incentives equal to the planting cost are assumed

Towards Nearly Zero Energy and Environmentally Sustainable Agritourisms: The Eectiveness of the Application of the European Ecolabel Brand

Tourism represents an important economic driver in Italy, being responsible for approximately 13.2% of the total GDP (a value higher than the reference European average) and for nearly 10% of the regional GDP. Among the touristic sectors, the agritourist ones show a persistent growth, experiencing in 2019 a 6.7 point percentage improvement compared to the 2017 figures. Given this situation, the transition towards a low-carbon path, aecting the building sector for some time, should also involve agritourist buildings, through the release of EU directives, member state laws, and technical rules. On the other hand, agritourism sites could be awarded the Community EU Ecolabel. Unfortunately, awarding theEUenvironmental excellence brand implies the availability of several data on building energy behavior that should then be managed by complex evaluation tools. To overcome this issue, the use of the simplified ARERA (Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy Networks and Environment) technical datasheets, issued to assess environmental improvements consequent to energy eciency interventions in the urban residential building stock, is proposed. The application of this tool totally avoids using building computer-based simulation models, thus facilitating the preparation of the EU Ecolabel request documentation by agritourism owners. Being awarded the Community EU Ecolabel also implies approaching a net zero energy condition because of a lower energy consumption and a minor recourse to fossil fuels. For this purpose, an application of an easy graphical method, previously developed for residential and commercial buildings, which visually represents improvements achievable by a given agritourism when implementing energy eciency measures, is presented

Foster Carbon-Neutrality in the Built Environment: A Blockchain-Based Approach for the Energy Interaction Among Buildings

Decarbonizing urban environments and reducing their energy consumption is one of modern society biggest commitments. In this regard, both the scientific community and international governments have been giving special consideration on improving the energy-environmental performance of mostly single buildings; recently the focus has been shifting towards a broader Positive Energy District (PED)/ Energy Community (EC) vision, from small clustered group of buildings to neighborhoods up until urban settlements. In this respect, integrating the use of renewable energy resources (RES) and actively involving building users can have a significant environmental impact on local areas. Within this framework, this work discusses the possibility of employing an innovative blockchain-based approach for the energy interaction among buildings. The blockchain technology can, in fact, be useful in managing such scenarios since it would allow to, not only consider buildings occupants behaviors, but also take into account concernings regarding the need for transparency, engagement, environmental and human health benefits, as well as the stakeholders role in the interaction/integration between PEDs/ECs and local/national electricity systems

The Landfilling of Municipal Solid Waste and the Sustainability of the Related Transportation Activities

The management of municipal solid waste is a crucial issue to address as we move toward the decarbonization of urban contexts. Not by chance, this sector plays a relevant role in the Covenant of Mayors program, whereby municipalities are called to design their own Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SECAPs). However, despite new regulations strongly pushing the recycling and reuse of materials contained in municipal waste, many cities still use large landfills. As part of the overall environmental pressure exerted by these urban systems, the transport of waste from collection points to landfills or treatment facilities must be considered in order to correctly assess the full environmental burden of waste management. To this aim, in this paper, the Ecological Footprint method is applied to the municipal solid waste management system of the city of Palermo (Sicily). The results show that the impacts produced by the means of transport used, both in the status quo and in the assumed enhanced scenario (with less municipal waste disposed to landfills in favor of recycling), are significant compared to those caused by the other segments of the waste management system. The concept of a “saved footprint” is also introduced here, in order to properly compare the two scenarios

Towards the energy optimization and decarbonization of urban settings: proposal of a strategy at Neighbourhood Level to Foster Nearly Zero and Positive Energy Districts

Optimizing energy management in urban contexts has been one of the biggest challenges of the last decades for both the scientific community and international governments to pursue carbon neutrality, enhance energy security and promote energy equity and accessibility. In this regard, particular emphasis has been given by the EU and its member States on improving the energy performance of built environments by reducing building energy consumption (implementing adequate retrofit interventions) and fostering the integration of renewable energy sources (RES) to achieve the conditions of Nearly Zero and Positive Energy Districts. To this aim, the most recent energy-environmental initiatives promote as an effective solution the joining of energy users into groups/units (e.g., Energy Communities, consortia, etc.) which usually include buildings located in portions of territory, i.e. districts that share and collaborate in the management of energy supply and consumption. The case study presented in this paper intends to provide a contribution to this matter by using a modeling/simulation-based approach involving the evaluation of different scenarios of energy efficiency measures, i.e. building envelope retrofit interventions, RES integration and their combination, in a historic existing neighborhood. The analysis aims at identifying which are the most effective strategies to implement at district level in a typical Southern Italy building context